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The media may be reporting signs of an economic recovery but the recession is still taking a toll on newspaper circulation.
From the New York Times
The reality facing American newspaper publishers continues to look stark, as figures released Monday show deep circulation declines, with average weekday sales down almost 9 percent since last year.
In the six-month period ending March 31, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported Sunday sales dropping 6.5 percent and weekday sales 8.7 percent. The figures are based on reports filed by hundreds of individual papers.
The losses were widespread, as nearly all of the major newspapers and many of the smaller ones lost circulation. Among the 25 largest papers, the San Francisco Chronicle and Dallas Morning News suffered the most, losing 22.6 percent and 21.4 percent during the week.
They were not alone. Among the 25 largest circulation newspapers, 10 had declines in weekday circulation of more than 10 percent. The Sunday circulation figures were slightly better, though far from a bright spot, as five of the 25 largest papers saw double-digit declines.
At The New York Times, circulation dropped 5.1 percent on Sunday, to 1.4 million copies, and 8.5 percent on weekdays, to 950,000. The Los Angeles Times declined 7.6 percent on Sunday and 14.7 percent during the week, and The Chicago Tribune fell 7.5 percent on Sunday and 9.8 percent during the week.
Newspapers have placed themselves in a viscious cycle by cutting positions as ad revenue collapsed during the recession which also contributed to circulation declines as people lost their jobs, but at the same time the cuts were so deep in some cases that the papers were just ghosts of their former selves which led even more subscribers to drop a paper that contained little useful information.
They may be getting close to stabilizing but many papers will have to make a decision as to whether or not they can actualy afford to publish a print edition as older readers pass on and younger readers look to the web.
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About the author
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.
It’s amazing … you don’t hear big stories like this in places like Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, or the UK. As far as I’ve seen, the most popular paper over in Germany, BILD, still has around a 3 million circulation, pretty stable even though the papers over here blame everyone for using the internet. Even the UK’s SUN still has around that amount daily. Now, granted, it *could* be that the topless girls featured in those publications may be ‘incentives’ to buy, but even the UK Telegraph, a broadsheet of record, still has a decent circulation. And, whoa! Those countries have that dreaded internet up and running too. Hmmm.
Everyone remember the witch-hunts the RIAA went on during the early 2000s? How their industry just was being decimated by those nasty, illegal pirates (everyday people) sharing and downloading their content? Why, that was the whole reason they were going to be wiped off the face of the earth completely! We HAD to trace these people and stop this, or else we’d have even more subway coin-in-the-hat musicians littering our streets! The ‘homeless’ rate of musicians would skyrocket if nothing was done!
Conveniently, during their trials and running around with burning torches and peeping into your windows with their flashlights, a study was actually done—- where it was found that a majority of those who downloaded ‘shared’ material actually went out and bought the physical CD. But there was the catch: IF … yes, IF … they saw VALUE in the content of what they were buying. At the time, CD retails were around $15. So, do the math, why would you buy a 10 or 12 track CD for $15, if there was a whopping 1 or 2 songs on it that you liked? That’s like going to McDonald’s and ordering 3 value meals, but you’re only hungry enough for the large fries of one—you’ll throw away the 3 sandwiches, 3 drinks, and 2 of the 3 fries. So why would you do that? But, the RIAA/record industry didn’t raise the standards of their signed artists or encourage better material—no, they just blamed the public for vetting their works and refusing to buy what they didn’t like.———- Sounds an awful lot like what Honest Obe and his Liberal cronies want to do to take RISK out of the equations, since that’s not fair enough for everyone, someone might *gasp* FAIL, doesn’t it?
Now back to the newspapers. What Don did not include above was the paragraph about how the Wall Street Journal had a small add to their circulation. Now the NYT tries to insinuate that the WSJ’s paid online subscribers are included (that’s not fair, since we don’t), but yet other newspapers that charge for Kindle service count those towards their circulations (whoops, we do that too). So take that apart: Even WITH Kindle and the like subscriptions——THE OTHER PAPERS *STILL* LOST SUBSCRIBERS, whereas the WSJ *somehow* gained, even if it was just 1%. Hmmmm.
Hey NYT, LATimes, Chicago Tribune, and all of you whiners——can it be because of CONTENT???? And why are you all complaining that you can’t be profitable, when you’re the ones steering your own readers to your sites that give the content away for free?
I guess when you don’t know how true capitalism works and you actively work to shut it down, you reap what you sow. If you think the American people are that stupid and somehow are in the dark about everything until you shine a light on it ….. guess again. They’ve told you already. Looks like you’re the ones too stupid to see the real story they’re reading to you.